Stingray: Force Recon Marines Behind Enemy Lines in Vietnam

In 1966, the Marine Corps introduced a bold, new concept to the battlefield. Little did the designers of that concept realize that it would change the way wars are fought, and the Corps, from that day forward.

One of the most influential strategies of the Vietnam War, the Stingray Patrol comprised seven to ten marines in small teams, inserted by chopper deep in enemy territory. Surrounded on all sides by North Vietnamese Army troops and Viet Cong guerillas, these small, high-effective teams brought death and destruction to the enemy without ever going head-to-head in a gunfight with them.

Like today?s Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marine Force Recon units that operate behind enemy lines using laser pointers and satellite communications, these Stingray Patrols helped target the enemy for artillery and air strikes . . . with devastating accuracy and effect.

Force Recon Marine and team leader Bruce ?Doc? Norton participated in many Stingray missions and, now, through interviews, eyewitness accounts, and declassified documents, he takes the reader behind enemy lines, telling the full story of Stingray?s origins and operations.

Stingray is the definitive history of these units and missions.

Major Bruce H. ?Doc? Norton, USMC (Ret.) has been a combat veteran, a career Marine Infantry Officer, a military museum director, and an adjunct military history professor, and is an award-winning author of numerous books on and about the United States Marines. Doc has a son, Bruce H. Norton II, and a daughter, Elizabeth A. Norton, who reside in Charleston, South Carolina.